1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting head and a liquid ejecting apparatus equipped with the liquid ejecting head.
2. Related Art
Ink jet printers are known examples of liquid ejecting apparatuses. A typical ink jet printer can print images on an arbitrary recording medium, such as a sheet of paper or cloth, by ejecting liquid onto the recording medium through a liquid ejecting head, more specifically ejecting ink through a recording head. Some recording heads known in the art have a structure in which a plurality of substrates are stacked on top of each other (e.g., Japanese Patent No. 4,258,668).
In the recording head disclosed by Japanese Patent No. 4,258,668, a reservoir and a through-hole are formed in a protective substrate so as to cross each other; the protective substrate is one of a plurality of stacked substrates. This through-hole passes through the stacked substrates and reaches the reservoir while being curved. The protective substrate is made of a monocrystalline silicon substrate, and the reservoir and the through-hole are formed in the protective substrate by subjecting the monocrystalline silicon substrate to an etching process. Both the reservoir and the through-hole form an ink channel, which is usually angled in a corner formed between the inside walls of the reservoir and the through-hole. If the channel has an angled corner, the ink is prone to stagnate in this angled corner. In addition, bubbles generated inside the channel are prone to stay in the angled corner. If bubbles are generated inside a channel in an ink jet printer, the bubbles may clog nozzles or cause uneven printing, which leads to a lowered printing property of the ink jet printer. Although it is preferable for bubbles to be purged promptly from a channel in a recording head, the bubbles tend to stay in a corner of the channel. In short, existing liquid ejecting heads have difficulty purging bubbles readily from a channel.